After a very rough couple of days I had a moment of personal epiphany waiting for a train at Union Square. It has been for the last few weeks that I find myself waiting for the L Train in the early afternoon after leaving the gym, and while I lean against my large metal column passing the time until my ride home arrives I am inevitable approached by the same shaved head, small pony tailed, orange toga wearing, tambourine playing, pamphlet distributing… gentleman. At first I was, as usual, polite yet dismissive, and yet as the days became weeks and his advances getting more aggressive trying to ply me with a poorly edited brochure, I reached a point where I snapped and asked him if he was blindly distributing his attack on education and logic. I instantly regretted my outburst, and attributed it to the swirling chaos of my life at the time. More and more I thought about it until I realized that although I do blatantly despise the pressure that these people force upon others to ‘awaken’ to their own religion, I also know that before I judge anything I should first attempt to understand it. This afternoon I was post-workout, apple in hand, waiting for the train when of course I was approached by our local Union Square Hare Karishna Ambassador. Being in a sour mood I was tempted to repeat my actions and send him packing, but fortunately I had sustenance in hand and time to kill. So instead of sending him on to the next cold dismissal I invited him to sit down and explain what exactly it was he was trying to accomplish and why I should tolerate his overly aggressive tactics. After hearing this man out it was quickly reaffirmed that I did not support or find logic in his personal gospel, but at least I knew that from fact rather than bias. In return I asked him to listen to my own views and prompted him about spending the time he was using up with handing out flyers and to instead go out and in the name of Hare Karishan volunteer his time with someone who was helping others. Rather than request that people listen to him without reason, lead by example and show people why the would want to be apart of his belief. He kindly listened to my retort, and then continued down the train path handing out booklets. Maybe tomorrow I will stop him again and repeat our interaction, it seems to me that might speak to him.
What did come from all of this is a reminder that I firmly believe to first write off something as wrong or at least disagreeable with your own personal views, you must know it. I now know one more thing about the world I am in, and although my beliefs on it did not change, at least I have a firm leg to stand on when asked why.
The Wandering Willey 